Reflections and ramblings from life in community in Birmingham city centre.

Saturday, 13 May 2017

Finding Hidden Treasure

It's been over two months since I last wrote a blog post ... the
longest gap between posts for quite some time, maybe even since I started this
blog: but it's certainly not as if nothing worth writing about has happened in
the meantime ...

The most significant recent
event in the life of our little community was the Taize Birmingham Hidden Treasure weekend. The culmination of over a year of planning and preparation,
this May bank holiday it brought together over 500 young adults from across
Europe to discover and share the hidden treasures of our faith and the acts of
solidarity towards which it inspired us.

I aspire for this blog to be a
place where I am honestly reflective, so I'm not going to lie ... there were
times along the way which were both stressful and exhausting. Helping organise an
international gathering involving the churches in 9 different neighbourhoods
across the city as well as the city centre churches of all denominations while
still maintaining all my other responsibilities was, perhaps at times, a step
too far.

But that cannot take away from
what was a truly beautiful celebration and an amazing opportunity to discover,
explore, celebrate and share in some of the hidden treasures which surround us.
Highlights, both during the preparation, and during the weekend itself,
abounded.

One of the great gifts I
received was the opportunity to discover so many different churches across the
city and to have the opportunity to be made welcome by so many different
communities. As I met with diverse churches working together to prepare to
welcome the participants, daring to open their doors to welcome the stranger: my
exhortation that their role was not a convenient added extra but was at the
very heart of the meeting and its purpose, was both genuine and heartfelt.

During the weekend itself, as life
was shared across denominations, generations, languages and cultural
experiences, the atmosphere was one of friendship, love and possibility. In the
current context and climate, this was the vision of the Europe I want to be a
part of: a Europe in which we are able to see that each of us each of us has something to offer but that none of us are complete on our own; a Europe
which dares to come together in order to make the world a better place for
those around us; a Europe which is guided by hope and not by fear.

And then there, in the middle
of a bustling city, in the midst of all the laughter and conversation; there at
the centre of it all: we prayed together. I don’t have, and maybe don’t need,
the words to explain that this too, was a highlight of the whole experience.

Most readers of this blog
already know that the Taize community has been a hugely significant influence
on my faith journey: the centrality of both prayer and community which I
discovered there has led me on the path that has shaped how I am living my
life. There is no doubt in my mind that the rich and fulfilling life I now lead
wouldn't have existed without it and I am very grateful.

It is no secret that Birmingham
too, a place about which I perhaps had some initial reservations when we moved
here, but a place that I have adopted, or that has adopted me and which I am
happy to call home, is a place I have come to deeply love. I love it in its
diversity and complexity: I love it for the beauty and possibility it offers to
those willing to seek them out.

My life here for the last three
and a half years has, in many ways brought the two together. During the Hidden Treasure weekend I was pleased to be able to share that coming together with so
many others.

The weekend was not, for me at
least, just an end in itself. Life, now, goes on: with more free evenings and a
few less emails, no doubt, but with the same vision: that as churches we can pray,
work and live together and that in so doing we stand as witnesses to the
possibility of a life lived in all its fullness, a life in which there are a
multitude of treasures which we can uncover or help to create, a life guided by hope.

Other adventures in the life of this city now await and I hope the
relationships built by these four beautiful days will be a spring board from
which we will journey onwards, together.

1 comment:

My name is Alice and I very much enjoyed reading your blog post about the Birmingham Hidden Treasure weekend. I was also at the weekend and found it a rewarding experience. Thank you for your hard work. I am currently working on a research project into Taizé and ecumenism for my masters in ecumenical theology. I conducted observations and informal interviews in Birmingham and I have also created a survey to gather people's experiences. I wondered if you would be willing to fill out the survey and share your experiences with me. I did think about asking permission to cite your blog post but in general I'm trying to keep people anonymous. The link to the survey is https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KPT7SFL Thanks for your time,Best wishes,Alice